Sir E. A. Wallis (Ernest Alfred Wallis) Budge

Born in 1857 in Bodmin, Cornwall, Sir E. A. Wallis Budge became an English Egyptologist, Orientalist, and philologist whose career was closely tied to the British Museum. He joined the museum in 1883 and later served as Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, building a reputation as both a scholar and a prolific writer.

Over the course of his work, he traveled to Egypt and Sudan on behalf of the British Museum and helped expand its collections of papyri, cuneiform tablets, and manuscripts. He is especially remembered for publishing translations and studies of ancient Egyptian religion and literature, including widely read work connected with the Book of the Dead.

Budge also wrote for non-specialist readers, which made the ancient world feel vivid and approachable to a broad public. Although some parts of his scholarship have been revised by later researchers, his books played a major role in popularizing Egyptology in the English-speaking world, and they are still widely recognized today.